In the News (Mon 19 Feb 18)

Verdi was born in Le Roncole, a village near Busseto in the Duchy of Parma and Piacenza (now in the province of Parma).

When he was still a child, Verdi's parents moved to Busseto from the province of Piacenza, where the future composer's education was greatly facilitated by visits to the large library belonging to the local Jesuit school.

Verdi went to Milan when he was twenty to continue his studies, but the Conservatory of Music rejected him, citing that he was two years over the age limit.

Verdi's gift for stirring melody and tragic and heroic situations struck a chord in an Italy struggling for freedom and unity, causes with which he was sympathetic; but much opera of this period has political themes and the involvement of Verdi's operas in politics is easily exaggerated.

Verdi was involved himself in political activity at this time, as representative of Busseto (where he lived) in the provincial parliament; later, pressed by Cavour, he was elected to the national parliament, and ultimately he was a senator.

Verdi was ready to give up opera; his works of 1873 are a string quartet and the vivid, appealing Requiem in honour of the poet Manzoni, given in 1874-5, in Milan (San Marco and La Scala, aptly), Paris, London and Vienna.

Verdi dominated the world of Italian opera from his first considerable success in 1842 with Nabucco until his final Shakespearean operas Otello, staged at La Scala, Milan, in 1887, and Falstaff, mounted at the same opera-house in 1893.

In addition to settings of the Te Deum and the Stabat Mater, Verdi wrote an impressive large scale setting of the Requiem, its origin stemming from the death of Rossini in 1868 and the death of the writer Manzoni.

The first, Ave Maria sulla scala enigmatica, written in 1889, was followed, on publication, by a Stabat mater, the Laudi alla Vergine Maria, on a text from Dante, and a Te Deum for double chorus and orchestra.

Verdis quartet was composed when he was almost sixty, and under unexpected circumstances.

In the winter of 1873, Verdi was in Naples for rehearsals of two operas, Don Carlos and Aida.

www.coloradochamberplayers.org /public_html/quartets.html (157 words)

Amazon.ca: DVD: Save up to 30% on bestselling DVDs. Free shipping within Canada available on orders over $39(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-11)

Performances of La Traviata stand or fall to an unusual extent on their principal soprano; the first thing that needs saying about this Glyndebourne performance is that Marie McLaughlin has all of the attributes needed for a role that is fundamentally a virtuoso one, no matter how emotionally...

Ambrogio Maestri stars in one of William Shakespeare's greatest comic roles as Falstaff in this operatic adaptation of the Bard by Giuseppe Verdi.

Recorded during a performance at the Teatro Verdi on April 10, 2001, this production of Falstaff was staged by Riccardo Muti, and also stars Roberto...

There is a tendency to assume that, when facing a serious illness, one must strive for constant peace and contemplation.

I remember when, as a passionate teenager trapped in the banality of suburbia, the only place within my Judeo-Christian tradition that could adequately express my range of emotions were the Psalms, full of angst and so flat out human that I felt safe in them.

It's that way with Verdi's Requiem: along with moments of complete beauty and transcendence, he gives us aggressive rhythms that express the more raw parts of our experience.

www.ktoo.org /comments.cfm?comment=13 (447 words)

Binghamton University updates(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-11)

Friday, January 24 at Binghamton University's Anderson Center for the Arts in what will be their first performance of the Verdi classic on an American stage

The opera company, which is 90-years-old, is from the Siberian city of Yekaterinburg, which was closed off to the world during the Soviet era.

Phillips-Metz has written several books about opera, including Verdi: A Biography, which in 1995 won the Royal Philharmonic Society Award in London and the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award in New York.

t has always satisfied me greatly, as a determined critic of educational institutions, to note that GuiseppiVerdi — outstanding genius of Italian opera — was tossed out by the Milan Conservatory in 1831 “on the score of lack of musical talent”.

In between Verdi’s output fell — like so many great European artists — into three periods, during which he transformed Italian opera from a prettily insubstantial artform into a vehicle of complex emotional expression.

The presentation by William Fulton, full of humor, stories, history, and music, will enchant listeners with a behind-the-scenes look at the music of GuiseppiVerdi and Rigoletto.

Fulton is a panelist on the Met Opera Theatre Quiz; an arts and cultural director of Mississippi public radio and TV; a music historian, and a singer with the Mississippi Opera.

This wonderful opera, by Giuseppi Verdi, is set within the context of an Eastern European one-ring family circus complete with an array of circus performers, including Rigoletto, the sad clown, and Sparafueile, a roadie/tentmaster, and his sister Maddalena, a fortune teller.